Related papers: Liquid Mirrors: A Review
X-ray mirror fabrication for astronomy is challenging; this is due to the Wolter I optical geometry and the tight tolerances on roughness and form error to enable accurate and efficient X-ray reflection. The performance of an X-ray mirror,…
The 4-m International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT) offers a unique opportunity to detect transients in a narrow strip of sky. We explore ILMT's potential to detect astrometric and photometric transients at various ecliptic and galactic…
A fundamental prediction of the cold dark matter cosmology is the existence of a large number of dark subhalos around galaxies, most of which should be entirely devoid of stars. Confirming the existence of dark substructures stands among…
Weak gravitational lensing enables direct reconstruction of dark matter maps over cosmologically significant volumes. This research is currently telescope-limited. The Dark Matter Telescope (DMT) is a proposed 8.4 m telescope with a 3…
As an important optical component, lens is widely used in scientific inquiry and production. At present, lens manufacturing mainly relies on grinding, polishing and other methods. However, these methods often require expensive equipment and…
We present a new program aimed at developing a new generation of micromirror devices specifically tailored for astronomical applications, multi-slit spectroscopy in particular. We first overview the general characteristics of…
A near-infrared telescope with an effective aperture diameter of thirty millimeters has been developed. The primary objective of the development is to observe northern bright stars in the $J$, $H$, and $K_{\rm s}$ bands and provide accurate…
NRT is an international project to build and operate the world's largest robotic telescope. The telescope will have a segmented primary mirror with an equivalent diameter of 4 m, a set of simultaneously mounted optical and near-infrared…
Concave mirrors are fundamental optical elements, yet some easily observed behaviors are rarely addressed in standard textbooks, such as the formation of multiple reflected images. Here we investigate self-imaging -- where the observer is…
Focusing with a 4$\pi$ parabolic mirror allows for concentrating light from nearly the complete solid angle, whereas focusing with a single microscope objective limits the angle cone used for focusing to half solid angle at maximum.…
High-Performance Adaptive Optics systems are rapidly spreading as useful applications in the fields of astronomy, ophthalmology, and telecommunications. This technology is critical to enable coronagraphic direct imaging of exoplanets…
Conventional mirrors obey Snell's reflection law: a plane wave is reflected as a plane wave, at the same angle. To engineer spatial distributions of fields reflected from a mirror, one can either shape the reflector (for example, creating a…
Reaching light intensities above $10^{25}$ W/cm$^{2}$ and up to the Schwinger limit ($10^{29}$ W/cm$^{2}$) would enable testing decades-old fundamental predictions of Quantum Electrodynamics. A promising yet challenging approach to achieve…
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izbGXdjvK_I for a YouTube video showing part of the results in this paper.We will consider surfaces whose mean curvature at a point is a linear function of the square of the distance from that point to the…
Relativistic flying mirrors in plasmas are realized as thin dense electron (or electron-ion) layers accelerated by high-intensity electromagnetic waves to velocities close to the speed of light in vacuum. The reflection of an…
Quasars are ideal targets to use for astrometric calibration of large scale astronomical surveys as they have negligible proper motion and parallax. The forthcoming 4-m International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT) will survey the sky that…
Topological solitons, such as skyrmions, arise in field theories of systems ranging from Bose-Einstein condensates to optics, particle physics, and cosmology, but they are rarely accessible experimentally. Chiral nematic liquid crystals…
The Submillimetron is the international project of the space telescope for astronomical studies at the submillimeter and infrared wavelengths using facilities of the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS). The concept of…
We entertain the use of light dependent resistors as a viable option as measuring sensors in optics laboratory experiments or classroom demonstrations. The main advantages of theses devices are essentially very low cost, easy handling and…
In-space manufacturing technologies are vital for enabling advanced space missions and addressing logistical limitations of space exploration. While additive manufacturing has progressed rapidly, it still falls short of delivering the…